Back to School Tips for Families

Preparing to head back to school can be both an exciting and challenging time for families and children. How are you and your children feeling about the prospect of heading back to school after a long break? Excited, nervous, perhaps a little overwhelmed? While all of these feelings are totally normal, there are strategies you can use to help prevent the overwhelm from taking over.

We would like to share helpful tips that you as parents and guardians can use to help make the transition into the new academic year a little smoother.

Give your children the right amount of notice

While you don’t want your children to feel like their summer holiday is ticking away, giving them some notice of when “back to school” will start can soften that transition time and help them prepare emotionally. You could use a calendar, planner, or chart to visualise where they’re at in their summer break. You could also schedule in any important dates or activities that will be related to them returning to school.

Plan in back-to-school shopping

While this doesn’t have to be a rigid plan, setting aside some time to ensure your children have everything they need for the new academic year can help you both feel like it’s not an overwhelming, last-minute rush. If you’re able to spend some time making an inventory of what your child already has—and what’s worn out and needs replacing—this can help make the dreaded school uniform shop a little easier!

Make the unknown, known

Change and transition can be tricky for the best of us. Whether your children are changing teachers, classrooms, or even schools, there’s an element of the unknown there that is bound to make them feel a little nervous. If they are already at our school but switching teachers, they may well have an idea of who their new teacher will be and what they’re like. In this case, taking the time to speak to your child may be enough. This will give them the opportunity to talk through any concerns they might have and understand that feeling nervous is completely normal when there’s change ahead.

If your child is due to join our school and enter into a whole new environment, there are steps you can take to help ease some of that uncertainty. If they’re worried about their new journey to school, you could discuss it with them and potentially do some practice runs together.

Reintroduce routines in advance

The Summer break can be an opportunity for the whole family to be more flexible and relaxed when it comes to day-to-day routines. There are many positives that can come from this “free time.” However, we know that routine and structure are very important when it comes to heading back to school. Rather than everyone having a shock to the system with trying to get routines like bedtimes back in sync, try a phasing in approach. This can tie in with giving your children notice that back to school is on the horizon and preparation for it has begun. When it comes to sorting out their sleeping patterns, having a week head start on earlier nights and earlier rises can be beneficial for everyone.

Screen time and digital boundaries

Hopefully your children have had plenty of opportunity to get away from screens and try out loads of fun and exciting activities over the summer. However, it’s also completely normal if rules around screen times have relaxed. As with everything else in life it can be a difficult balance to strike. But just because some of those limits may have relaxed a little, doesn’t mean that there isn’t time to reign it in a bit before the new school year.

As digital devices are becoming more and more prevalent in our children’s educational activities, it’s crucial that we help them develop boundaries around the tech they use in their leisure time too. If you have a family media agreement that’s gone out the window over summer, why not consider sitting down with your children and drafting a special “holiday edition”. This way, you can all compromise on some of the rules while ensuring healthy boundaries are still in place.

Of course, if you don’t already have a family media agreement, now is a great time to plan one together! This way, it’ll be firmly in place for when the children go back to school.

Have a wonderful last stretch of the Summer holiday and we look forward to seeing you all on Friday 5th September.